Flyout Menu Use Expanded for Understanding

In our last article we considered what problems may arise from flyout menu use with the search engine optimisation you are trying to obtain and what consumers may feel about them.  We have a list of questions you need to ask yourself before you implement the flyout menu.

1. Is your consumer going to respond favourably?
2. What consumers are you targeting?  Are you targeting computer users or the general public with your products?  For example computer supplies generally means you have a computer savvy individual, but pet supplies could be anyone thus a flyout menu could be a mistake.
3. Is the flyout menu going to help with user navigation?  If it will not help in navigation do not use it for you will lose SEO strategy.
4. Is the flyout menu going to work within your management system for creating new content?  In other words when you need to add a new subsection will it be too difficult or impossible?
5. Can you make the navigation between subsections easy to reach or will you be creating a static link back up?  This means will the back link work or will it not move the page?  If the drop down menu will not allow the person to go back then you have larger issues.
6. Will using flyout menus work if the consumer decreases the page size or text?  Furthermore will the drop down menu work in different browsers?  Sometimes other browsers do not work the same, which means you could irritate an unsuspecting consumer using FireFox over Google Chrome.

Flyout menus are overall very irritating to the mass public.  They tend to sit and curse at their machine because they were just on the menu and then it disappeared.  Your aim is to make the consumer turn into a buyer.  You want sales on your site; that is why you are going to the trouble of creating your website and getting in inventory.  If you do find you still think the flyout menu is a good idea there are some things to consider now that you have looked at the above questions.

You will want to avoid any flyout that is narrow.  In other words, make sure that the link is not going to collapse because it is too narrow for the user to actually get their mouse on it.

Furthermore make sure the menu is clear.  You will want arrows to show that the menu is there and that it will drop down.  A lot of times this is the thing that is lacking for consumers.  There is no arrow to show the menu will actually appear.

You will also want to use a delay before hiding the site menu.  Let it sit there for 30 seconds before it goes away.  This way if the mouse runs over it, it will disappear, but not before someone can use it if that is what they want.  Horizontal flyouts tend to do better than the vertical flyouts because there is more room.